Wednesday, September 22, 2004

By the way, one footnote before I let you go, we're going to continue our coverage on this. Jeff, do you remember the name of the news organization that, before the last election in 2000, reported that George W. Bush was arrested for -- supposedly for drunk driving?

GREENFIELD: Well, one of them was FOX News.

BLITZER: That's correct, FOX News. Because you had suggested earlier, if you could imagine FOX News Channel reporting this -- well, they did, to their credit, report that before the last election.

Secondly, it wasn't reported by Fox News, it was reported by Fox News Affiliate, which is Not The Same Thing.

The truth is that it was a resourceful 27-year-old reporter at a local Fox affiliate, WPXT-TV in Portland, Maine, who uncovered the DUI story, not the Fox News Channel in New York or Washington, the partisan national network that's the focus of Robert Greenwald's new documentary, "Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch's War on Journalism." Nobody associated with "Outfoxed" or elsewhere participating in the media debate has suggested that local Fox news teams in places like Bakersfield, Calif.; Birmingham, Ala.; or Boise, Idaho operate under Republican marching orders as they cover arsons, car crashes and zoo openings. So it's not that unusual that an enterprising reporter, operating off the FNC reservation as it were, could play a starring role in the DUI story. Not surprisingly, Ailes and Cameron are now conveniently trying to pretend that it was Sean Hannity's "Fair and Balanced" Fox News, those bold seekers of the truth, who unearthed the damaging dirt on Bush that almost cost him the election.